Be Vegetarian! Poem by Bernedita Rosinha Pinto

Nothing belongs to yesterday
everything belongs to tomorrow
the trees, the birds, the moutains
the stable, the animals, the squirrels
the fishes, the rivers, the seas
all stir into action of motion
inter-dependent on each other
for shelter, for survival, for equity;
but upon the emotion of togetherness
upon the thought of reasoning
man finds himself co-ordinating repulsively
with laws of existence and right of habitat;
man acts like an enemy of nature
catching fish, killing animals for food
his needs he can satiate eating pulses and cereals,
vegetables, fruits, drinking water and juice
but man has voracious appetite
culpable of meat and fish as staple need
that in the harness of cruelty
the species that cannot voice objections
surrender to annihilation;
man who walks on this earth authorizing
co-existence, self-survival and self-satisfaction,
by the end of his time on earth, drops himself
from his saddle of life
conferring defeat upon his own existence
while trees, animals, birds, fish, plants survive
under the rising sunshine
that enables them to go on and on.